This invention relates to apparatus and methods of thermally processing a material such as a semiconductor substrate.
A number of applications involve thermal processing of semiconductor and other materials which require precise measurement and control of the temperature of the material. For instance, processing of a semiconductor substrate requires precise measurement and control of the temperature over a wide range of temperatures. One example of such processing is rapid thermal processing (RTP), which is used for a number of fabrication processes, including rapid thermal annealing (RTA), rapid thermal cleaning (RTC), rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition (RTCVD), rapid thermal oxidation (RTO), and rapid thermal nitridation (RTN). In the particular application of CMOS gate dielectric formation by RTO or RTN, thickness, growth temperature, and uniformity of the gate dielectrics are critical parameters that influence the overall device performance and fabrication yield. At least some of these processes require variations in temperature across the substrate of less than a few degrees Celsius.
As used herein, the term substrate broadly refers to any object that is being processed in a thermal processing chamber. Such substrates may include, for example, semiconductor wafers, flat panel displays, glass plates or disks, and plastic workpieces.
One element for minimizing variations in substrate temperature during processing is precise measurement of the temperature of the wafer. One method for precisely measuring substrate temperature is optical pyrometry. In that method, the radiation emitted by the substrate is measured to determine the substrate's temperature. The relationship between spectral emitted intensity and the temperature of the emitting object depends on the spectral emissivity of the substrate and the ideal blackbody radiation-temperature relationship, given by Planck's Distribution. Using known approximations, including an approximation known as Wein's Displacement Law, the temperature can be approximated from the wavelength of light having the peak emission or it can be determined using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law from the spectral emitted intensity.
However, optical pyrometry suffers from limitations due to the inability to accurately measure the emissivity of a substrate. Moreover, even if the emissivity of a substrate is known at a given temperature, it changes as a function of temperature. These changes are difficult to measure and therefore introduce an unknown error into the temperature measurements. Errors on the order of 10 degrees Celsius are not uncommon.
The emissivity of a substrate can be affected by many factors, including the characteristics of the wafer itself, such as the wafer's temperature, surface roughness, doping level of various impurities, and material composition and thickness of surface layers. Other factors include the characteristics of the process chamber and the process history of the wafer.
Various techniques have been employed to reduce the effects of changes in emissivity. One such technique involves placing a thermal reflecting body near the back surface of the target substrate so that thermal radiation from the substrate is reflected back to the substrate. The reflector may be said to form a reflecting cavity with the substrate. A light pipe may be inserted through the reflector into the cavity to sample radiation from the reflecting cavity and deliver the sample light to a pyrometer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,660,472, which is incorporated herein by reference, describes such techniques.
If the reflector were an ideal reflector, all of the thermal radiation emitted from the substrate would be reflected back onto the substrate, so that the reflecting cavity would act like an ideal black body. In other words, the intensity of the thermal radiation within the reflective cavity would not be a function of the emissivity of the surface of the substrate. The reflective cavity would increase the effective emissivity of the substrate to a value equal to one. Because the reflector is actually less than perfect, however, the effective emissivity of the substrate is higher than the emissivity of the substrate but less than one. Nevertheless, some error is necessarily introduced because the reflector is not an ideal reflector, and so the light received by the pyrometer is not perfectly representative of the light emitted by the substrate.
Another important element in thermal processing of substrates is the ability to control the temperature of the substrate. Generally, the substrate must be rapidly heated and cooled within very precise parameters over a wide range of temperature. A number of techniques are known for providing rapid and controllable heating and cooling. For instance, it is known to change the rate at which heat is transferred between the substrate and a heat source or thermal reservoir during processing of the substrate by applying different gases to the processing chamber. For instance, the rate at which the substrate is heated can be significantly increased by providing a purge gas with a relatively low thermal conductivity (e.g., nitrogen, argon, xenon, or a combination of two or more of these gases) in the reflective cavity during heating of the substrate. Likewise, the rate at which the substrate is cooled can be significantly increased by providing a purge gas with a relatively high thermal conductivity (e.g., helium, hydrogen, or a combination of those gases) between the substrate and a thermal reservoir during the cool-down phase of the processing. U.S. Pat. No. 6,215,106B1, which is incorporated herein by reference, describes such techniques. These methods, however, require careful control of the gases, which can complicate and/or prolong the process.